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A School Board Meeting

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A School Board Meeting by Patricia C. Behnke "You will face me when you are speaking to me." "There will be no more speaking out of turn. "Sit down and keep quiet." Sound like a parent disciplining a child? A teacher trying to maintain discipline in the classroom? No, these comments come from my elected school board members as they addressed teachers at a recent school board meeting during the public input session. The local newspaper reported that 100 teachers showed up to express their dismay with salary negotiations. But there were far more teachers than that present. Fifty teachers showed up from my school alone, and we made up a small sprinkling in the crowd which probably came closer to numbering 400. A news report on the radio the next day said that teachers had come to the school board to complain about a six percent raise. The report made it sound like we were whining because we weren't satisfied with a seemingly generous raise. The issue is not entirely with the raises, although six percent does not mean that every teacher will see that amount; some will only see three or four percent. It means that on an average the raises will represent a six percent increase. Stablizing and bringing our salary schedule up to date in addition to ironing out stipends are the biggest stumbling blocks. There is a huge discrepancy in my district between what an administrator makes and what a teacher makes. With seventeen years of experience, my salary ranks 64th in the state of Florida for teachers with the same experience. 64th out of 67 counties. Yet our top administrators rank in the top ten among other counties. The school board chair, reprimanded the teachers' union president for not addressing her as he faced teachers and thanked them for coming to the meeting. At one point two school board members left the board room when a teacher took too much time pointing out the discrepancies in salaries. He was left to finish his remarks without the ears of two school board members. Later a teacher from a middle school, stood up and told the school board, "I've been watching this school board for years. Board members always treat citizens with respect, but something happened tonight when teachers stood up to speak. You treated them as if they weren't citizens with the right to speak. Our students would never be so rude to us." A band director from another middle school spoke to the school board about several issues. At the beginning of the school year she had been told that her room needed repairs to bring the band room up to fire code standards. It would take only three days, she was told. Three days where she would be relocated into a room with a capacity for 28. Her classes range in size from 28 to 59. But she thought that three days would be easy enough in order to get the band room up to code. It is now five weeks later, and her students are still crammed into a room not meant to hold over 28 students. She asked to be told when the rooms would be done. The school board gave her no response.

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